Rough-in complete

We now have confirmed the air conditioning vent shapes and locations. All of the rough-in appears to now be complete, gas, air conditioning, vacuum points, electrical & plumbing. So hopefully the gyprock is next.

Below are some photos of what the current internals look like without walls:

This is the view from our dining area which is situated near the alfresco and is part of the lounge/kitchen open plan area (north side of the house).

Some serious Cat 6 data cables!

This is the southern side of the house with a view from our media room, into the laundry, main bathroom, bedroom 3, ensuite and then main bedroom.

Rough-in has begun

The skylights went in on Tuesday and we have now confirmed the internal gyprock angles for the skylights and all of the recessed niches within the bathrooms. The plumbing has also been confirmed as well as the electricals – position of tvs, data, hdmi, power and optical cables where required.

Let’s just say this house will be more wired up then an office as we have multiple data ports in every room.

Below is a photo of the internals with all of the framing completed.

Roof is on!

Well this week the roof tiles went on, with the gutters the week before. The skylights will be installed next week and then I’m assuming all of the external doors will be installed apart from the main entrance pivot door; which will get us to lock up. So this means we are still on track for completion this year. The next major steps are the internal walls – rough in and then gyprock with a targeted completion of the end of August. In the meantime we have been confirming the colour and material for our eaves, screens and decking and the colour of our garage door.

Finally our site meeting

Today is the long awaited site meeting! We went through the house room by room, ensuring taps, cupboards, doors, bulkheads and so on were as we wanted them and this took us 3 hours and we still didn’t manage to get through all rooms! We agreed to meet back again in roughly a month’s time so that we could reconfirm what we discussed and go through a couple of more items. We are so close to having a roof on now and it was stated that the next 4 weeks were critical to us having the house completed before Christmas.

We ended up changing a couple a number of things, i.e. the direction in which doors opened, bulkhead positions and so on. We also decided to change the surface of our garage façade to be acrylic render and our alfresco to be composite wood decking rather than tiles. By changing our alfresco to decking we were then able to raise this area up with minimal cost to get that seamless indoor outdoor look where the floor heights are level. Also a sample of the outdoor tile that we were planning to use was brought to the house and unfortunately it really didn’t give us the look we were after - lesson learnt to bring samples out of the show room/warehouse and onsite to see how it looks. In the end we have selected another tile that I have seen in a friend’s alfresco so I know exactly how it will look.

Roof almost done

Two weeks later and the roofing is still in progress – 90 % complete with most of the internal wall frames up. I was invited on site however to reconfirm the placement of the skylights, which was great as we realised one of them was not going to look right so we ended up changing it to more of a square looking shape rather than rectangle. Whilst I was there we ran through a couple of other changes and corrections, all of which were detailed in an email for the builder to address. The second level bricks have been cleaned and they look fantastic. 

The plan for the next 2 weeks is to finish the brickwork and then get the roof tiles up. We have finally booked in our site meeting for the 21st when everyone is available, now I need to get my list of discussion items up to date to be sure that we cover them off whilst we are onsite.

I must mention I’m pretty impressed with our builder’s attitude when fixes and issues are raised. Nothing is too hard and the cheap and easy way is never taken. If it isn’t right Rocco will acknowledge it and address it firsthand.

Quick rafters

So two weeks have passed since my last post and most of the brickwork is complete apart from the façade, shed and half wall in the alfresco, but enough to get the roof beams up. So two days ago the street was blocked off so that a crane could lift and position the roof beams on the house. Also a number of the internal room frames were lifted into position and just two days later the chippis are on site installing all of the roof frames and boy do they work fast. In the morning only a couple of rafters were up and by 3 in the afternoon it looked like a roof!

So hopefully next week the roof tiles will be on and we can finally have our site meeting!

More bricks

More scaffolding was installed with the intention to finish the brick laying of the upper floor during the first week of June. Unfortunately the rain returned and a couple of days were lost. So the last two weeks didn’t go to schedule as only the south facing wall was completed and alfresco pillars. All of the external door frames on the upper level have been positioned waiting to be secured by the brickwork. With any luck the brickwork will be completed next week and the roof rafters then can be positioned.

Whilst the progress on the house has been slow, we have managed to agree on and purchase the pendant lights for our hallway and living/dining area. We are still debating however whether to place pendant lights above the dining table or over the kitchen island. I think we will leave this decision for later once we have the kitchen area/skylight put in to get a better idea as to how this will look.